Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: The Five Rules of Power Politics | Big Think

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: The Five Rules of Power Politics
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Democracy, says Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, is the worst form of government from the leader’s perspective.
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita:

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Silver Professor of Politics at New York University. He is an expert on international conflict, foreign policy formation, and nation building. His current research focuses on the links between political institutions, economic growth, and political change. He is also investigating the causes and consequences of international conflict as well as national security policy forecasting and analysis.

Using a proprietary mathematical formula that takes into account the self-interests of and alliances among actors in key business and political questions (i.e. whether Iran will build nuclear weapons), de Mesquita predicts the future for businesses and organizations such as the CIA.

His most recent books include The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (PublicAffairs, 2011) and The Predictioneer's Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future (Random House, Inc., 2009)Additionally, he has authored more than one hundred articles and fourteen books on politics, as well as one published novel, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge (Ohio State University Press, 2001).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: Machiavelli was a very smart guy who, by the way, wrote The Prince in the hope of attracting employment. He failed to get the job. He was a little too nice, not quite tough enough.

So most people who are familiar with Machiavelli are familiar with the views he expressed in The Prince. Not so many people seem to have read his discourses where he thought that the best form of government is a more republican form of government, that is a democracy in our modern terms, and while I certainly agree that from the perspective of the folks on the street it’s far and away the best form of government, from the perspective of a leader, somebody who wants to hold onto power, it’s the worst form of government because it puts you at the greatest risk of losing power. So in The Dictator’s Handbook we go well beyond Machiavelli’s understanding to layout precisely what leads you to hold onto power and precisely what ties the hands of a democrat in trying to do the things that dictators also do.

Let’s start with what the five rules of politics are. First, you want to depend on as few people as possible to keep you in power. I'm going to come back to that because it ties very closely to the second.

Second, you want the pool of people you could call upon to fill the role of that small group, that pool, to be as large as possible. That way,the folks who are in the small group that keep you in power know that if they are wayward, if they begin to back somebody else or they’re not willing to do the things that you the leader ask them to do they know they’re easily replaced. Often, especially journalists make the mistake of looking at rigged election systems, such as Lennon introduced in the Soviet Union, and mistakenly believing that somehow because there are elections this confers legitimacy. That is a very silly idea because, after all, everybody already knows the outcome of the election before it happens, so how could it be legitimate? The function of having universal suffrage in a rigged system is exactly to signal the folks in the inner circle, the people you’re rewarding, that hey, you are easily replaced, you better do what I want.

Third rule, so you’ve got as small a group as possible drawn from as big a pool as possible. You want to tax the people as highly as you can because you want revenue to enrich yourself and to bribe your cronies. Taxing the people as highly as you can, there are two constraints. You don’t want to tax so much that people prefer taking siestas to doing work because the objective of the tax, of course, is to generate money for you. If the people aren’t working then they’re not going to generate money for the leader. And second, you don’t want to tax to the point that people calculate that you know things are so bad I might as well revolt, I can’t be worse off. So you want to tax as much as possible as long as people keep working and don’t revolt.

[ichabodcrane]

5 Rules of Power Politics
1. Depend on as few people as possible.
2. Make the group of people that you can trust as large as possible (make officers expendable).
3. Tax people as highly as you can (not too high that they quit working or revolt)
4. Use minimal amount of that revenue to keep administration loyal.
5.* Be kind of "civic-minded" with leftover revenue?

[tohopes]

The word 'democracy' is often used that way today, but the older definition is where all citizens (or possibly all citizens of a certain social class) vote together, and any majority of them can make whatever decision they want to make, at anyone's expense.

In contrast, a limited republic doesn't let any majority of citizens make any decision they want to make. It puts legislators in offices with limited power and has checks and balances to make it hard for them to change fundamental things.

[eggory]

Half of the United States want the country to be more like Europe, and half of them want it to be more like the United States used to be. That's a very wide gap in opinion, and the difficulties in reaching a mutually acceptable compromise are I think inherent to that problem. The solution is to reduce the influence of the federal government so that the states can stay out of each other's way and truly respect their differences, and let people vote with their feet.

[stefdiazdiaz]

I read the whole logic of political survival and I shall read it again.

[Skippa]

Kinda of a late response but I felt like I had to. Political parties are a legitimate expression of a democracy, period. The only systems that work without them, or better yet, with just one, are dictatorships. Ironically, elections with no parties involved would not only be difficult but downright chaotic at best. By the way, in our current state the difficulty comes from structural problems related to institutional failings, conjectural issues, etc., not because parties are bad.

[David-iolp]

To be honest, I find his theories confusing. An in-depth study of history and great historical figures will teach you much more about the nature of power. Mr Bruce's theories are academic at best, with not very much practical value.

[TheCountess]

a representative democracy (republic) doesn't at all change the 51/49% balance.

and if the people vote to decide who's in charge, its a form of democracy. that's a simple fact. you cant deny that.

[Pyratheon]

Great video for planning my path to becoming God Emperor.

[veso]

This guy is awesome. He's a great writer too.

[Jivvi]

It has often confused me why some people talk about republics and democracy like the are exact opposites. While it is true they are not quite exacty the same, they are very similar, as you say, and can co-exist, which is made obvious by the fact that there are a number of countries whose official name begins with "The Democratic Republic of..."

[AutodidacticPhd]

This talk becomes much more interesting if you start viewing the politicians in a "democracy" as the group he referred to as the supporting coalition and the financial leaders as the real power politics in the system... all the power, none of the exposure.

[yoyoyoy]

I've read an article on cracked saying that lately it's been said that "The Prince" was Machiavelli's own like 16th century Stephan Colbert style political trolling.A lot of his other stuff is like regular non-bad/manipulative political tactics.Unfortunately not many ppl historically didn't seem to get that message."The ends justifies the means" which is supposedly from Machiavelli's actually translates more accurately from Italian as "One must consider the ends" actually.

[Captain_Mulligan]

power has always been important to people. The people who didn't value power died out a long time ago...

[Uhmu]

I was talking in more general terms then just the US, but besides that, i don't think this kind of Muppet representative is very effective, if you want more direct democracy, have more referendums and then the people can decide.
As i see it, a should always vote by his conscious and best knowledge not what voters want. If the voters don't like how he votes, get someone else the next time.

[Monochromicornicopia]

Our electoral college did that very well this past election. However badly you think Obama is doing, Romney would have made that look like spilled milk.

[intestinomedicino]

This should go on top of the 48 laws of power.

[F]

you have a point.. but give them something to vote for..

[faIcn]

thank you, this was very informative

[RonaldAaronLopez]

I HAD NO IDEA 2-PUG SHAKUR WAS THAT WELL KNOWN!

[RinguPingu]

Exactly what was the fifth rule? It mostly seemed like he just described what you could do with your money, rather than laying down any concrete rule. I'm writing a presentation based on these rules, so I'd be grateful if someone explained this to me!